Logical multi-node applications are implemented using two or more network nodes and can provide a wide variety of services, such as different web applications, back office, document management, communications, etc. Logical applications can range from simple websites that use only a few nodes to more complex structures in terms of both scale and depth, such as Gmail™, which can use hundreds of thousands of different nodes.
Efficient monitoring and management of an environment hosting logical applications requires dynamically understanding its logical structure; for example, identifying which network nodes/objects are part of the same logical application/service, and what roles they have within the logical application. For data centres that host complex logical applications this can be an extremely challenging task because components of a single logical application may be executed across tens of thousands of servers.
Configuration drift is also common problem in data centers due to the high number, and frequency, of hardware and software configuration changes. Configuration drift makes it difficult to accurately monitor which nodes are responsible for actually implementing a logical application. It is therefore challenging to automatically perform management operations, such as monitoring, optimizing and/or troubleshooting, multi-node networked applications because such tasks rely on correctly identifying the logical applications and their components. Accurately tracking the nodes that implement logical applications can offer management advantages, such as improving data routing and resource management (e.g. allocating resources having CPU/memory requirements that are particularly suitable for a database server or a web server component of a logical application).
VMware's vRealize Automation (vRA) Service Blueprint is a concept that can be used to define which nodes should implement which logical applications. However, it is not designed to deal with dynamically changing configurations or pre-existing environments.